Given the mountains of text in this game plus the connections to Ciel no Surge I'm really questioning whether we'll ever see it localized. Seriously, the amount of text in this game is not normal, even for an RPG...

Shut your mouth. Of course we are going to get it. We have to get it. *cries a little inside at the possibility of it not getting localized*

In terms of the main plot it's pretty wordy but nothing completely outrageous. So above-average amounts of text but certainly still doable. But then you start adding in all the side conversations, dive stuff, field conversations (which aren't that bad but they're new in this game), and of course the shop conversations. And while shop conversations aren't a new thing they feel particularly wordy this time around. Like they're as dense as in the more recent Atelier games except in those games the main plot is way smaller. And then you can go back to the same shops with different characters and get entirely new conversations about every single item. Then on top of all of that there's a pretty extensive glossary for all the unfamiliar terms in the game (which there are a lot of) and there multi-page entries for many of them.

It just feels like a lot of stuff to cover. I've put like 50+ hours into the game now, don't feel like I'm particularly close to the end, and keep in mind that I've been complaining about how short the combat sections are. While that's gotten a little better it's still not great. So that 50+ hours has mostly been spent reading (well, or listening when there's voice acting but there are so many lines a significant fraction do not have voice acting)...

As for how much time you have to continue playing before the end, that depends on how far along you are, as the game only has three phases.Of course, there's also the option to end it prematurely with an implicit bad ending, but that choice is pretty much given shortly before the final battle.

I wouldn't be too sure, the Escha and Logy localization wasn't particularly good.

Well so long as they didn't leave Japanese text in the game completely untranslated and introduce new bugs that weren't in the original Japanese version then they still did a better job than NISA did with AT2...

The problem with Escha and Logy localisation was the inconsistency, particularly with missions. I can't recall specific examples, but I know there were times when a task would require you to "Make [this] item" or "Imbue with [this] property," but the word they used in the task was different to what it said when you were synthesizing. Pretty sure there was one that was completely different (Meteor -> Lava Cube? Or something like that).

Yeah, E&L's localization was filled with more frequent, minor errors rather than anything game-breaking. Lots of typos, you're/your and whatnot, but none of that really detracts from the experience in a way that is terribly detrimental and more of an annoyance than anything.

But in a game like this, where consistency is important, that's where I'd be more worried. There was an entire conversation in E&L where "Slag" turned into "Slug." It felt like there was a bunch of people translating one game and they didn't have a lot of communication with each other. I'd say it lacked something of a cohesiveness sometimes? And in these games, that's almost game-breaking.

I'll definitely be getting Ciel Nosurge Offline. The episodic nature and online requirements were what were really holding me back from getting it before, and playing Ar Nosurge certainly has made more curious about it (even though I've kind of spoiled myself now...). Nice to have it finally available in a self-contained package.

This existence of this version also makes localization seem more feasible, though I still don't know if it would really sell in the west...

As far as Ar Nosurge Plus is concerned, should have seen that coming from all the plus versions of the Atelier games...seriously, I should just stop buying Gust stuff on PS3.